Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and the power of music

A successful cellist in Great Britain, she toured the world — but long steered clear of Germany. It was only later in her career that she traveled to the land of her birth to tell students and young people about her experiences as a Jew in the Nazi era. A survivor of the Holocaust, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is now well known in Germany.

Anita (second from left) was the youngest of three sisters in the Lasker family. Born on July 17, 1925 in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland), she enjoyed a sheltered and happy childhood in a musical family. Her mother was a talented violinist, her father a successful lawyer. Anita's musical talent was strongly encouraged and nourished.

The Lasker sisters had a happy childhood — until the Nazis came to power in 1933, when Anita (right) was eight years old. Everyday life in Breslau changed; she experienced antisemitic hostility. "People suddenly had the courage to abuse Jews," she later said in her conversations with young people (1931 photo from a private archive).

Nazi oppression was a threat to family life. Alfons, the family father, (right) was banned from exercising his profession. Marianne (left), the oldest daughter, was able to join a transport of Jewish children to England in 1939. The parents were deported in 1942 and murdered by the Nazis. Anita and Renate were arrested by the Gestapo.

The sisters went to separate jails and only met up again later, at Auschwitz. Both survived the Nazi death factory: Anita as a cellist in the concentration camp orchestra, Renate as an SS messenger. In late 1944, both were sent with other prisoners to the Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated by British troops in April 1945. They stayed there for the first few months afterwards (front left: Anita).

Anita Lasker's (left) ability to play cello saved both her life and that of her sister Renate (right). In 1946 she emigrated to England. Music making became her livelihood. She founded the English Chamber Orchestra and toured extensively. At London College she met her husband Peter Wallfisch, also originally from Breslau. This picture shows the sisters in 1946 in London.

It was nearly five decades before Anita Lasker-Wallfisch made her first trip back to Germany. In her advanced years, she still goes on reading tours and is featured on television (here with her grandson Simon in 2015 on the German TV talk show "Markus Lanz"). Pursuing an inter-generational dialogue with young people, she tells school-age children of her experiences at the Auschwitz death camp.

The Holocaust Day of Remembrance in 2018 was a special moment in the life of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: She gave the central address to the German parliament and members of the government (front left: Chancellor Angela Merkel). As a politically aware witness of earlier times, her address was very personal, calm and clear, the words carefully considered.

Her speech told of German history, her own life as a German-British Jew and of resurgent anti-Semitism in Germany. Angela Merkel and German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier personally thanked the elderly woman for her moving words, free of resentment and accusations but filled with hope. Her Bundestag speech was named Best Speech of the Year 2018.

At first emotionally unable to tell her children Raphael and Maya of how she survived as a persecuted Jew in the Nazi era, she only later began to open up to young people and interested listeners. To preserve her memories for generations to come, she launched an interactive project. "Somehow I feel it's my responsibility," says Lasker-Wallfisch, now 97.